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Monday, January 31, 2011

As many of you know, Brian Gray and I are currently working on a collaborative pen together. I've clearly hitched on to the right wagon, here! I'm so thrilled for my good buddy Brian as his Edison Huron has been nominated for the 'Easy Writer' award for 2011 done by Pen World Magazine (of which I have no affiliation).

Edison Huron

The votes are open to anyone, but to cast your vote you need to send in the ballot that comes in the insert in Pen World. It's obviously partly a marketing ploy to get you to buy their magazine, but it's worth it to support a great independent pen maker like Brian. If you happen to subscribe or if you see the next issue of Pen World on a news stand somewhere, pick it up and vote for him. Hopefully this will bring him some good PR whether he wins or not, and he can continue to make righteous custom pens for us all for years and years and years....

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Due to popular demand, Nathan from Noodler's has decided to continue making his black and blue Waterase ink. He originally was planning to discontinue it due to a lack of interest at the New England Pen Show and from Noodler's retailers, but the posting of his YouTube video, some positive reviews from some hardcore pen enthusiasts, and our talking about it here on Ink Nouveau and during Write Time at 9 caused this ink to gain enough traction to be 'revived from the dead'. Check out Nathan's video:

We're going to be getting this ink back in stock soon on GouletPens.com, so if you're interested, head on over there and sign up for the email list and we'll let you know as soon as we get it in. This won't be an exclusive Goulet ink, but as far as we know we're the only ones that will be carrying it for the time being. We don't have any pictures of the ink yet, though! We will be fixing that as soon as we get it in, and we'll be making this ink available for samples then, too.

You can check out a good review of this ink over on Peaceable Writer as well, who has been an advocate for the continuation of this ink.

So here's to all of the advocates of the Waterase, your opinion matters! You helped to bring Waterase back from the 'br-ink' ;)

Thursday, January 27, 2011

There are a lot of Noodler's Flex Pens floating around out there, and I thought a video on how to completely disassemble and clean them would be helpful to a lot of you out there. This is a great pen for experimentation because it comes apart completely with just the use of a Q-tip!

I spend some time towards the end of the video on adjusting the nib and feed to suit your writing style and the ink you use, but I plan on covering that more thoroughly in another video. The main point I want to get across in this video is that you shouldn't be afraid to take this pen apart and learn it inside out. The more familiar you are with your pen, the better you'll be able to adjust it for yourself and the more enjoyment you'll get out of it! The silicone grease I use in the video can be found here, but lots of other kinds will work too (just don't use silicone CAULK, that's not going to end well for you).

Let me know if you have any questions about anything in the video. I plan to do multiple Noodler's Flex Pen videos as it seems the more I play with them, the more video opportunities I see. If you have any questions or comments, just post them here in the blog comments.

I got a fun new pen, the Platinum Music Pen. I've been interested in the pen for over a year, and what inspired me to get it was that I wanted to get familiar with the nib before Noodler's comes out with their music pen here in a month or so. I have a Pelikan m800 and it's similar in a lot of ways, but a fraction of the price. In any case, it's a cool pen.

Nathan posted a video on Baystate Blue, and I shared my reaction to it. I inked up a brush pen and a Preppy rollerball tip that comes with the 4.5 ounce BSB. I'll be posting more detailed videos soon.

The Ink Drop theme for February is 'My Inky Valentine'....that's all we'll share because we want it to be a surprise! Let's just say they'll be inks great for writing a love letter to your Valentine :) They'll be going out on Feb. 1st, so it's not too late to sign up!

There's also been some interest lately in Noodler's Waterase ink, which is currently unavailable. We're working on that ;)

And lastly, we spent some good time on the Noodler's Flex Pen, how it's used and how to adjust it if you're having any issues with yours. The pen is able to be completely disassembled and has a fully adjustable nib and feed, so a little playing with it can give you just the right experience! I'll be working on detailed videos of the flex pen this week.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

This week Write Time at 9 is going to be a lot about pens. If you're just hanging out tonight at 9pm EST, you should just hang out with us and talk pen stuff.

Posting has been light lately, for good reason. We've been slammed lately, and what little free time I've had I've been spending with family. Thanks to all my loyal followers for bearing with me during a very busy time for me :) If you want to say what's up and hear why I'm so busy, come tonight to the broadcast.

Today is a special day, not only because it's the anniversary of my and Rachel's engagement, but it's also our son Joseph's first birthday! We're going to strictly keep the broadcast to one hour, no bonus time so we can enjoy the rest of the evening as a family :)

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Rachel and I are always thinking of fun new ideas for Ink Drop and the idea came to us a couple of days ago to do a 'choose your own' Ink Drop, so that's what we're doing in March! We're calling it Mysterious March!

We have a link below for you to vote on the 5 colors you'd like to see out of the nearly 300 colors we have, excluding those that have already been used for Ink Drop so far. The 5 most popular choices will be used in March's Ink Drop! Vote now, it won't take long:

Vote here!! (Contest now closed)

We'll be accepting votes between now until 11:59pm EST Wednesday (1/26). We thought this would be something fun to get everyone excited and have something to talk about. What do you want (or not want...) to see in March? Do you have any cool ideas for a theme?

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Nathan Tardif from Noodler's never ceases to amaze me, and I'm sure most of you too! He posted a video tonight covering several rather epic topics. It's a 29 minute video (I watched the whole thing immediately!), and he covers a bunch of topics, so I broke them all down with a time marker for easier reference:

19:45- detailed examination of the Noodler's rollerball pen, cleaning the rollerball tip, demonstrating the pen in use

A special thanks to Mike for sending me the link to this video. I subscribe to Nathan's videos, but Mike sent me the link before I got my subscription email! I was the 4th view, haha! ;) It's crazy, Nathan puts these videos up and doesn't even give a heads up to his retailers (not complaining, just stating a fact). He is a man who lives by his own accord, that's for sure!

I know there are several things going on in this video, what do you think?

We wanted to keep this episode simple. We've had a lot of people new to fountain pens that have been asking us to cover the basics lately, so we dedicated this show to it. We cover mainly what makes a fountain pen different from a ballpoint/rollerball pen, how it works, what is a nib, what are the nib sizes, etc.

We also discovered that J. Herbin Creapen ink cartridges are the same size as Platinum cartridges! What that means is that you can use the 5 J. Herbin ink cartridges from the Creapen in your favorite Platinum pens (like the Preppy). Sweet huh? The giveaway was a pack of these cartridges, which TWRDO won by guessing how many posts Ink Nouveau has had during its first year (288 total).

We have a really cool and exciting idea for Ink Drop for March, which we'll be posting here on Thursday. ;)

We showed how to use a rocking blotter (towards the end of the video), and what blotting paper is. I'll be doing a more detailed video on that soon.

No real updates on the Brian G. pen yet, we have clips coming in and it's going to be a few weeks before we get those in. the clips are the holdup at this point. I won't be hyping it up and getting everyone too excited about them until it's closer to the delivery date.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

This week Write Time at 9 is going to be heavy Q&A. If you're just hanging out tonight at 9pm EST, you should just hang out with us and talk pen stuff.

I've been getting a lot of requests from those new to the world of fountain pens for me to cover more of the 'basics', so this week we'll be doing a Fountain Pen 101 broadcast. Some things we'll look to focus on:

Saturday, January 15, 2011

The next round of Noodler's Piston-Fill Flex Pens are coming in, though they will be a bit late. The weather here in Virginia is fine, but it's a mess down in Georgia where the pens are coming from. Originally, we were supposed to get them this past Tuesday, then Wednesday, then Friday. Well, currently they're sitting on a UPS truck in Georgia, and the new arrival date is Monday. We thought we were setting a really nice buffer to schedule our release for Monday the 17th (6 days after the 'original' arrival date), but the weather threw us for a loop.

Friday, January 14, 2011

As part of our break after Christmas, Rachel and I set up something called the 'Goulet Outlét', which is an area of GouletPens.com for our sale items. As a subsection of the Goulet Outlét, we have something called the 'Bottom Shelf'. This consists of notebooks with crunched corners and inks with damaged outer boxes....all things that are still usable, just not salable at our normal price. We've had it up for two weeks with nothing in it, but now it finally has stuff!

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Nathan at Noodler's likes to experiment, if you hadn't figured that out already. One of his creations is something he calls 'waterase' ink, it's a wet erase ink meant to be used in highlighters or marker pens on dry erase boards. He introduced it at the Boston pen show last year. Here's a video he made on it:

This is by far the most entertaining Write Time to date! We went in with a pretty open format, but things really became exciting when we unveiled a working prototype of the collaborative Edison and Goulet pen, unofficially dubbed the 'Brian G' pen. Brian Gray was in the chat, so we had him call in and talk by phone.

Watching this broadcast, you get an insight into some of the aspects of what go into pen design from both a seller and pen maker. It was great for us to get live feedback as well, especially when it came to the clip! We had a myriad of different clips that we put on the pen prototype, some as serious contenders, and some as complete jokes. Fans in the chat dubbed some of the best (meaning worst) clips with such names as the 'squid' and the 'vegetable peeler'. It was quite a riot, with many gut-busting moments!

If you only watch one Write Time, watch this one. It's freaking entertaining. The real fun starts about 1/2 hour in.

Also, be sure to stop by Brian Gray's live broadcast tonight at 9pm EST where he's going to be unveiling his overlay pen for the very first time. He's been teasing everyone with little previews, and from what I've seen they are truly something worth checking out. Very nice indeed!

There will be a lot of Q&A during this broadcast. I've been busting my bum lately keeping up with GPC and updating pictures (have you seen our Noodler's inks page?), so I'll be looking for more of an open forum for the broadcast. Post in the comments here if you have any questions for tonight!

Saturday, January 8, 2011

It's this time of year when we're all so hopeful of the changes that are on the horizon for the coming year. We feel inspired to make changes in our own life, so we make 'resolutions'. The only problem is that we often stick by them only for a few weeks (at best). This collection of permanent inks make it so your resolution will be there even if you break it ;)

This month's colors:

Noodler's Black

Noodler's Heart of Darkness

Noodler's Lexington Gray

Noodler's X-Feather

Private Reserve Invincible Black

All of these are either very popular inks or inks that we get a lot of questions about, so we thought it would be great to get them in everyone's pens.

Let's get a conversation going in the comments about this month's drop, I feel like there's a lot we can talk about....

Have you inked any of them up yet? What rigorous tests have you put them through?

Friday, January 7, 2011

I'm crazy excited about some of the new products coming from Clairefontaine and Rhodia this year. To see the Exaclair interactive online catalog for yourself, go here. Exaclair is the sole importer of these brands in the US.

There's lots of exciting stuff, but you'll have to drool for a few months! Most of these won't be in until the Spring, likely April or May. Until then, try not to drool into your keyboard, that gets messy. :P

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Nathan Tardif, the Willy Wonka of the ink and pen world, has announced an epic year-long artist contest calling for Noodler's artwork. Even if that doesn't interest you at all, the video is still great because he showcases the full line of his pens (including colors not yet released). His grand prize pen just defies explanation!

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

This week Write Time at 9 is back! If you're just hanging out tonight at 9pm EST, you should just hang out with us and talk pen stuff. This will be a pretty Goulet Pen Co heavy night, as we've made a LOT of changes lately. Here's what's on the itinerary:

Monday, January 3, 2011

Yeah, I clicked the wrong date when I scheduled the post this morning about the Write Time at 9 topics. It's not tonight, it's tomorrow night!! Sorry, I wrote it at 3am and I guess I was a little confused about what day it was :P

Sunday, January 2, 2011

One of the best parts about having my own business is that it's never boring. I get to do a diverse range of interesting tasks every day, and if I want to learn something new I just go for it.

Rachel and I took down GouletPens.com for 9 full days, partly to relax with family, and partly to update the site with awesome new features like a wish list, mobile browser, and individual color swabs next to the ink sample products. After making all these changes, what we quickly noticed was that the site's product photography was incredibly lacking.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Rachel and I took just over a week off for Christmas, and we're back and ready to rock 2011. We had a relaxing break, and made some nice updates to GouletPens.com. We look forward to doing some awesome stuff for you this year.